Kickstart My Heart (Plea)

How is it that the break that I took ended up being more stressful than when I was working around the clock? Maybe it was the work that was keeping me going the whole time. I’m more exhausted now than I was a week ago at this same time. I thought that taking a break would have helped me deal with some deeply unsettling personal matters, but somehow it only helped to solidify my ever growing break with humanity and just how little I believe in it as a whole.

My desire to scream at everyone over their entitlement and privilege reached an all time high this week as on an almost continual basis all but a very tiny handful of friends and acquaintances found new way to let me down and depress me even further.

Without going into massive specifics – and I HATE even bringing this up in a public forum – due to circumstances beyond my control I don’t have a place to live for the next two weeks. If you want to know the story, ask me in person and I will tell you. It’s a clustercuss of ups and downs, a maze of paperwork, a load of idiocy on the parts of people you would think would be able to help (city, province, charities), but there is a solution in sight. It’s been going on for the past several weeks and again briefly at the beginning of the year, and it’s simultaneously embarrassing to talk about and hurtful for me to write about, especially since this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. It’s actually the second time in several years that I’ve had this rotten luck.

Again, this isn’t about the ones who try to or have helped. This is about those who can’t step outside themselves to just do anything for anyone other than themselves. And for those of you joining my life really late, both of my parents have been dead for over a decade now and I don’t have family to fall back on at all. Not even extended family. That is, unless you want to give me five grand to track them down and go to the States and find them, but honestly if you want to give me that much money to fly down there you could just as easily keep me here.

Now, I know that not everyone I know is capable of helping out when I need it or sheepishly ask, and even those who can help will only be able to do it to certain degrees based on means, availability, and comfort. I will never begrudge those who have already been there to help out wherever they could and so grateful and humbled. Some of them are close friends that have been around since the beginning and others are only casual friends with hearts made of pure gold. Some people just simply can’t and I totally get it. I could get into how some people are unable to grasp various degrees of what constitutes help (i.e. how it’s not all about just straight up giving me a place to crash for a night or two or a few dollars for something to eat), but that’s a different story.

My problem and something that I’ve become uniquely attuned to is that everyone around me seems to be blowing their money now more than ever on some of the dumbest shit imaginable. They are unable to help because they have lived so far beyond their means that they can’t even fathom what helping another human being is. I asked, again, embarrassingly, for $20 last Tuesday from two separate people, the use of which I will get back to in a second.

One of them said they couldn’t do it (or help with a place to sleep for even a couple of hours due to having a small apartment, which is more understandable), and yet they just came back from a trip to Florida and torment me still with pictures of their happy, lavish trip every day. The other similarly declined yet had bragged on Twitter two days earlier on donating $200 to the Kickstarter for the Veronica Mars movie.

That $20 would have gone to the following: a TTC day pass (the fares for which are one of the most overpriced things on the planet for return on service, but that’s another gripe) to get around since the weather was unremittingly shitty about and food for three days. By food for three days that means one McChicken from McDonalds every day for three straight days while eating nothing else. Wasn’t going to be the most glamorous $20 ever spent.

So what ended up happening that day was there was an ice and sleet storm. I started the day with $3 in my pocket which I had to spend to meet a friend to borrow $5. Then, when I left my friend the weather was even worse and I had to go to work I had to spend another $3 of that 5 to get back on the subway. This left me with $2. That same afternoon I see the friend who went on vacation eating in a really nice restaurant on Yonge Street. I wanted to go in and flip the table over. And this, contrary to what you might thing, was actually a closer friend to me than most.

So you might say, “But Andy, you have a job. Several, in fact! Several good jobs, even. How do you not have anything?” Good question. First off, as I stated in my last post, this was never a good paying a job and now more than ever I almost have to quit entirely and take a fast food gig just to get money fast. Don’t laugh, I’ve applied. I’ve also applied for assistance on various levels, but being a single male with no dependents and actual employment, you don’t qualify for anything. On top of that, I already put all the money I had and borrowed more into getting a new place that I can move into on May 1^st. I absolutely couldn’t get anything sooner without paying out the ass for a temporary room in a shady, suspect place. So I have negative eighty dollars in my bank account as is, and as we all know, that’s a pretty bad spot to be in.

Second, in the past month I have had two paycheques bounce on me and one outlet just hasn’t paid me. Another outlet that pays me on a regular basis doesn’t pay until the end of the month (with all of last months getting spent on getting me out of this mess ASAP), and yet another is three months past due on paying me. Another outlet doesn’t pay until an article runs and I have nothing running for them until June. Finally, I don’t get any of the advance money for the book I’m working on until I can prove a certain amount of its done.

I’ve just grown fed up and I have no idea where exactly to go from this point on, but I know it shouldn’t be this difficult to turn to those who allegedly support you on a friendly level to help me. I’ve reached the point where the few people who can help me are stretched to the point where they just can’t do anything anymore.  So if you see me or know how to contact me or care, just know that it’s reached the point where I have to make it public knowledge that things are shitty, just know that this is going on even if I haven’t brought it up to you directly and until the end of the month, know that I won’t turn down any help that I can get. Pretty desperate at this point just to get back on track. Also, I can’t spend another night sleeping at the airport since they caught on last night that I wasn’t actually flying anywhere. Today is literally (meaning the dictionary definition of “in the strictest sense”) the last day I have to come up with some sort of plan for the next two weeks. I have tried for the past seven days to do something on my own and nothing at all worked or panned out. There are sadly no more options other than looking like a complete and total bum.

So if you can offer any of the following, here’s the kickstarter I am willing to propose:

For a donation of any amount of money for food or transportation, I would be willing to pay it back as soon as I possibly can. It won’t be immediately. Admittedly, I am already in a small bit of debt from this ordeal already. BUT what I would be willing to do – for any loaning of money $20 or more -  is to write you an original story on any topic of your choosing OR I will write about or review any movie you want me to review. This can also be claimed by anyone willing to cut out the middle man and buy me a TTC weekly pass for either this week or next OR anyone willing to offer me work space during the day.

If you want to buy me lunch, I will send you a PDF copy of my collection of short stories and essays from 5 years ago titled SLEEPLESS. Since the book was finished and published ages ago, you would think this would be a lesser offer, but I really can’t think of anything else equal to a lunch in terms of pricing that I could offer. Also, since part of my “get back on my feet” plan is to re-release this for this summer via eReaders, I can’t really just throw it around like I did the past couple of years.

For a donation of having me over for dinner, I will do the dishes and clean your kitchen for you. And by clean your kitchen I mean the basics. Counters, floors, a brief once over of the fridge. I’m not cleaning the oven… unless you want to pay for that. An extra $20 and I’ll clean the oven, but I would prefer not to. Last time I tried to clean my own oven I broke out in an allergic rash from the cleaning foam even while wearing gloves.

For an offer of a place to sleep for any amount of time, the donator will get the perks listed above as well as more general housework done. In addition, if the donator provides ingredients (or just gives me cash and trusts my taste, which given some of my reviews, you might not want to go that route), I will make a home cooked meal for the provider. I can cook. It’s a side of me no one else really sees. It’s a pretty special offer.

Any other offers (including work and commissions) can be discussed. As you can see, I am trying very hard to have a sense of humour about this, but I really just need something, anything to go right. And when some of your closest friends find ways to let you down (again, not all of them, you guys), what other options are left?

If you have any questions, chances are you know where to reach me.

Save Rock and Roll

“I need more dreams and less life.”

I came out here with such anguish and conflict in my heart. Looking out this window at an expanse of open fields and highways and all I want to do is run through them as far as I can to the edge of all known humanity and scream at the top of my lungs and fall to my knees crying until I somehow come close enough to finding God.

This has been the last month for me. Constantly.

I thought I had it conquered this weekend. Then Monday hit and just a wave of bad feelings washed over me. Actually, it started Sunday night and then Monday morning kind of put it over the top. My to-do list had 22 things on it to do today, and I stopped in my tracks after only three.

I couldn’t do it. The wall was hit. My mind wiped clean of everything except an all encompassing panic and fear for the next 24 hours, and what was worse was that I began wondering what the point of all my work was.

I always lived by one rule in life: When your job starts feeling like work and you stop having fun doing it, you should probably get out.

But what if that job is the one thing you ever loved? What if it was the only thing that ever made you really feel worth a damn in life? What if it was the only remotely great thing in your life and it started treating you like shit as if it was a doomed relationship in need of counselling? What if it was a job that you loved with all your heart and soul and you just wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if it was ever taken away from you?

That’s the point I’m at right now for various reasons. That’s why with a heart as heavy as it’s been in quite some time for the next several weeks I feel the need to step away from what I have been working on. I love the work no matter how hard it might be at times. I live for the hustle and even through disagreements with peers I know it’s the kind of business where most of the people I know are good and genuine enough to pick you up when you fall or be there for you when you need it.

I know a lot of you are possibly thinking about how this might be somehow influenced by the “leave of presence” that Roger Ebert wrote about shortly before his death last week, and while he was definitely onto something this had been something I wanted to plan for a while. He couldn’t have had an easy time writing over three hundred reviews and however many more blogs, essays, and recipes that he cranked out last year, and I in good health tallied up last week that I had done 513 pieces in the past year across every outlet. This isn’t some sort of game of one-upmanship on my part, but that was the number. Like I said, there are a laundry list of reasons and problems both personally and professionally that need to be addressed before I can feel good about my job again.

I guess part of me wants to apologize and part of me wants to scream at people. I could easily do the latter and say how slighted I feel at times and how angry I’ve been towards some people these days, but while some of those complaints would be valid, others would be blown severely out of proportion. This isn’t a time for beef. It’s a time for rebuilding and getting back to a point where I will feel great about what I do again.

But before I take this break I have to take a moment to address my writing lately. I’ll be the first person to admit – and maybe, again, this is getting blown out of proportion – that it isn’t up to the standards I have for myself. Too much of it has been done as a rush job and I haven’t been able to give it all of the attention I have wanted to. And for that I’m sorry. You guys deserve better than what I’ve been doing for being so supportive of me, and I fully intend to pay that back in full in the future. This brief (not too long) break isn’t just for me, it’s for us and for the betterment of the game in general.

But I can’t leave without one final parting shot to something that’s irked me over the past few weeks. I’ve always prided myself on being someone who is upfront about how they are feeling at any given moment, but as of late people who know that I’ve had a lot on my mind – and without naming names, people who should know me better than that – have used my own feelings as a backhanded way of disagreeing with me.

One of the most famous quotes ever delivered by Roger Ebert was the following:

“Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.”

So whenever I don’t like something that everyone seems to adore and the person in question gets annoyed that I didn’t like it I almost ALWAYS get the following response:

“You’re wrong. It’s about what you bring to it.”

What the hell was I supposed to bring? Galoshes? An inner tube? A rake? You’re telling me what I’m supposed to bring to something? I don’t think so. That’s not how this works and I think it’s one of the reasons I am taking this break. If I hear any variation of that phrase again I might unnecessarily snap on the person who says it to me.

I have always given every movie regardless of how much I liked it or disliked it a fair shake for the better part of two decades. Everything has the potential to be good and everything has the potential to be a disaster. Hope for the best and don’t be shocked if it never happens. To say that I’m not getting something because my emotions aren’t valid in comparison with yours makes you sound like a dickhead. And that’s exactly what that phrase a lot of people so carelessly throw around means.

But that’s not the real point here. Just something I had to point out on the way out the door for a while. My emotions are not confused, and watching films is still the best emotional connection people can have to an art form aside from music. My intellect and my way of putting forth these ideas definitely is. That’s what I need to get back to. That’s the point I’ve kind of strayed from. That’s what needs to be remembered here.

So for the next few weeks you’ll see a few scattered pieces from me here and there for stuff I’ve already filed and completed, and I will be back to do some work for Hot Docs and the bigger stuff, but I just have to unplug for a while, get some stuff in order, and come back better than ever on a full time basis. I want to really remind myself of why I started doing this to begin with and shake off the fog around me. I have to get my own house in order before dealing with everyone else’s.

You might even see a bit more writing in this neglected blog than I had been delivering. I’ll be focusing a bit more on my book(s) than the day to day stuff, which will allow more time for places like this. This was always supposed to be the place where I wrote about the things that I wanted to write about and not necessarily what I had to write about.

“You are what you love, not what loves you.”

I have to thank all of you that have stuck by with me the past few months. I won’t go anywhere because I think you all know that I just don’t know when to quit.

“I will defend the faith, going down swinging.”

The work situation I just find myself in at the moment is both financially and emotionally unstable at the moment. If I had at least 50% of that equation it would level out a bit more, but that’s just not the case, and it’s at the point where not only am I not happy with the work I am producing, but the person I feel myself becoming in the process. I have to be me, and I like to think that’s why people have listened to me thus far. For now, I need to do this so I can still be myself and feel good about it.

We’ll talk soon. I’m sure of it.

DOC: Death of Comedy

“To the critics: Movie 43 is not the end of the world. It's just a $6-million movie where we tried to do something different. Now back off. To the critics: You always complain that Hollywood never gives you new stuff, and then when you get it, you flip out. Lighten up.” – Peter Farrelly, via @Farrelybros Twitter account, January 26^th

“Movie 43 is going to get about an 8 on Rotten Tomatoes' meter. The critics are gonna freak out at this thing, but the college kids, high school kids, 20-somethings, and anybody who smokes weed is gonna flip out.” – Peter Farrelly, via Farrelly Brothers Facebook, January 25^th.

Dear Peter Farrelly,

I never take things to heart when I don’t have to, and I never take anything personally unless I remotely have any sort of emotional investment in them. I don’t even care when people slight critics as a profession, because – and let’s be perfectly honest here – none of us should be in this business if we can’t dish it out and take it in equal measure. No one will like everything you do 100% of the time on either side of the equation. I’ve been called everything from an “illiterate cocksucker” to a “useless piece of garbage who wouldn’t know joy if it bit them on the ass” from filmmakers before, and I never felt the need to start any sort of shit with them because within those letters were impassioned defences of the work that they had done and what they had accomplished. They stated facts and reasons why I was wrong, and while I didn’t necessarily agree with them I just let it go because it was their opinion. I could dish it out. I could take it. Their blood was up, but it never got mine up.

You sir, have gotten my blood up because in a week where several other films could give your piece of trash sketch comedy movie a run for its money in the “worst film of 2013 department” you were the only one to take it personally, and buddy, you picked the wrong horse in your entire filmography to back if you feel persecuted about the critics – all of whom PAID to watch your movie since the studio refused to screen it for anyone – and how they negatively reacted to your work of pure ego and arrogance that you are attempting to mask as populist fare for the masses.

Right off the bat, let me state that I don’t think your movie is “the end of the world” or that it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I also understand that your movie is an anthology film and that you aren’t the only person involved. I’ll even openly admit that I chuckled a few times in the pieces that were directed by James Gunn, Rusty Cundieff, and Griffin Dunne. They still weren’t great skits overall, but they had something that made me not hate them and made your entire multi-year labour of love somewhat worth it. So to think that I outright hate anything and everything about your film, that’s not true. I’ve only seen a handful of films in my life that I have found to be completely irredeemable, and this isn’t that.

But you in particular need to know something that seems to escape your memory entirely. This “different” kind of movie you wanted to produce already exists and has been done better. Sketch and anthology comedies have been around in full force since the early 70s and they never really went away - even if they ended up more likely going straight to video or to cable. It’s a fate your film should have suffered, but no. You’re Peter Farrelly. You had a trio of major hits with your brother Bobby in the 90s, and your careers never really went away no matter how diminished the box office returns were. Your films were never great critical successes, and I still defend some of them to this day. Even Movie 43 still has its defenders within the critical community or else it wouldn’t have made it to that coveted 8% on an already bullshit aggregated website that I never hope to be a part of because of how it kills the dialogue that I love about film in the first place.

But you didn’t do something different. You took an old formula and hoped that the new generation doesn’t recognize it. To say that you did something different is an unnecessary tooting of your own horn. I’m sure any asshole writing an Adam Sandler movie could come up with a dude with balls on his neck dipping them in butter or putting them in Kate Winslet’s mouth after giving her a kiss on the forehead. Anyone could create a framing device that ends so lazily that it might as well just tell the audience to fuck off because you have their money anyway. You didn’t even tell most of the people working with you to step their game up, either. Do you even realize how unhappy everyone seems to look or that they’re just putting in the bare minimum because they were probably making bare minimum wages or doing favours for friends? Have you even watched your movie from start to finish? Wait… that was a bit harsh. You had to or else you wouldn’t be defending it this much.

But let’s talk about that framing device, which consists of Greg Kinnear as a studio executive getting held at gunpoint by Dennis Quaid’s crazed writer to get this sketch movie made in the first place. It’s a sloppy framing device that never goes anywhere. First it’s about Quaid acting crazy, and then it’s about a cuckolded Kinnear trying to kill his boss (Common) and forcing him to blow a security guard (Will Sasso). And instead of having a punchline, you end it with a smug, botched special effect that leads your leading men to literally turn to you and tell you to abandon the project and just run the last sketch (which honestly isn’t even the last one, and shame on you for relegating James Gunn’s gross, but still kind of inventive sketch to the middle of the credits when any sane people left the theatre already). Your whole movie reeks of that shrugging and walking away from a project that only an awful film has.

It’s an oddly critical remark within a project that you had to think was ultimately critic proof, or else why would Relativity Media refuse to screen it for anyone? I’m actually one of the few people who can understand the reasoning behind such moves, but you clearly think and thought that yourself. It presumes that paying audiences can’t think critically about a movie themselves.

There’s no doubt in my mind, Peter, that you made this film just to amuse yourself first and foremost, and that you are:

1. Deluded into thinking you know what an audience really wants from a comedy.

2. Not even bothering to care what they thing and simply shrugged and said “Well, if they like it they like it.”

3. You’re sadly right and we’re all fucking doomed.

None of those are the right answers, but the second one comes closest to being any sort of a sane and understandable answer. But your brief tweets seem to insist that you are out of your ever loving mind.

I don’t find it adorable or amusing that you feel the need to say your film is a Hollywood production, because by championing it as such you make every other product coming out of LA look terrible by association. You spent years on this and you never ever would have been able to make this film if you didn’t have the last name you had. You wouldn’t have attracted all of these directors or actors to this project if you weren’t you. You insinuate that this kind of film could have been only made in Hollywood because outside of making this kind of thing in your own basement no one would have been stupid enough to let you do this film otherwise.

You also twist the definition of “Hollywood” to suit your own personal gain and agenda. There are plenty of “Hollywood” films that do things differently and that people really seem to like. They are called AT LEAST HALF OF THE BEST PICTURE OSCAR NOMINEE, PETER. Hollywood gives critics new and unusual things to praise and condemn all the time. We’re only calling your movie out because it’s truly a piece of shit.

I also abhor how you feel the need to say your film only cost $6 million dollars. Sure, by Hollywood standards that’s pretty low, but it’s that same kind of nit picking arrogance that suggests you’ve taken bigger shits than what your movie cost. It’s the same kind of bullshit that led Mark Wahlberg to say that his $55 million dud Broken City was a tough film to make on such a “low budget” last week. You never would have even gotten that amount if you weren’t someone with three $100 million hits under your belt, and I bet you probably could have done the noble thing and shown this was a true passion project and sell all your shit away for a project that you truly believed in. THEN you might have a reason to bitch, but what reason do you have, Peter?

Drop the “man of the people act” and the conceit that all critics are bad. You’ll make your six million dollar cash grab in no fucking time with or without us, and that’s a fact. You’ve already won the game. You probably made that back on international sales alone since your own distributors and studios seem to be doing the bare minimum for your film to begin with. I can see the appeal to “the college kids, high school kids, 20-somethings, and anybody who smokes weed,” of which I only occasionally belong to that last category, but I remember actually being the other three.

And I’m not saying that you’re entirely wrong. I know that comedy, almost moreso than any other genre outside of a straight up art film, is subjective. Some of them may very well get a huge kick out of the film. It didn’t happen in my screening on Friday, which was a little more than half full, included eight walkouts, and only a handful of chuckles with zero actual belly laughs. But again, I didn’t poll people on the way out, so I wouldn’t know. The only comment I even heard among the stunned silence was one such twenty-something saying “Man, that was a lot of dick jokes.”

But if you want to keep up this man of the people bullshit, know that you are fleecing the poorest people possible. Does anyone under the age of 20 outside of the extremely privileged have the money to blow on this shit? Fuck, do people who routinely buy weed have the money to blow on this shit? I’ve had funnier nights in my 20s stoned out of my mind counting the stairs on a staircase than I did watching your movie. I had more laughs in high school trying to run up a snow drift and falling down numerous times and I nearly broke my leg that night.

You are counting on these people to essentially give you six million dollars that you probably already cleared just signing up for a potential Dumb and Dumber sequel that isn’t even a done deal or one of your producer credits. I get from your tweet that I’m not exactly your target demographic, but I don’t have the money to blow on this bullshit either and I have no truck calling you out on how much of a hypocrite you are whether you realize it or not. Do you even know what good most of the people who see your movie could do for themselves and others with the six million dollars you shat all over the screen? Do you know how many better filmmakers could have made dozens of films with your “paltry” six million dollars. I’m not one for moralizing about this kind of thing, but since your movie is so ugly that it looks like it cost maybe a tenth of that, I feel somewhat justified to make that point.

Fuck being a critic Peter, I’m talking to you as a human being right now. Talk to anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I’m not some silver spoon fed asshole who whips his dick out to get off on a stack of Eclipse Series Criterions. There’s not a single thing that I have gotten to in my life without scraping or earning any of it, and I still haven’t made shit. You spent four years making this movie? FUCK YOU. Ask me what I spent the past four years doing. You wouldn’t last four days in my life, the hell with four years. Ask most of YOUR POTENTIAL AUDIENCE what they spent the past four years doing. Cry me a river that people don’t like your movie, Peter. When I think of some depressed or stressed person from your implied demographic who just wants a laugh going to see your movie because they want a laugh and leaving potentially feeling worse about everything or feeling taken for a ride, I feel awful and I couldn’t give a shit less if any review cost you between $5 and $18. Why do we go to the movies? We go to feel happy, or scared, or amused, or provoked by thought, and your film does none of that beyond questioning how it got made in the first place. I have never been one who looks to forward any agenda, and I think by and large most critics aren’t like that. I’ll freely admit that some who just seem to love the sounds of their own voices, but to have something this negatively received means you probably screwed up more than you succeeded.

And don’t get me mistaken, I’m not jealous of your success in any way, and it’s not that you don’t potentially have another good movie in you. I’m sure you earned most of your chances just like so many great artists have done. I’m saying that based on those tweets you’ve forgotten where you came from and what your movies meant to people. Dumb and Dumber holds up. Kingpin holds up. There’s Something About Mary holds up. The movies you did with your brother are largely not that bad overall. You guys took chances with The Heartbreak Kid and Hall Pass, and no matter how much I think they didn’t work, I admire to some extent what you were trying to do. Movie 43 isn’t anything. It’s a perfect null-set piece of shit, but at least it incited a reaction in me, which some movies can’t even muster.

But overall I severely disliked the majority of it and I never wanted to contribute to the chorus of people shit talking your movie, because here’s the biggest kicker and fallacy of all: If I wrote a pan and said all the things I hated about your movie, to some degree it would elicit curiosity from people to go and see your film. I wasn’t about to give your movie that satisfaction and I was fully prepared to forget it ever existed. I was just going to set it aside and let people find it on their own. To your credit, it probably is critic proof.

But then, you had to go and run your mouth and act like an arrogant jerk, Peter. Let me be very frank and honest with you since I haven’t pulled any punches yet and I think I’ve been pretty diplomatic and forthcoming that your film isn’t the worst thing ever. For the past several weeks I’ve been questioning why I even do this job. I was ready to just throw it down and walk away until I realized that people like you are why people like me exist. I would have honestly ignored you if you just didn’t say anything. I was going to be the bigger man, but pointing out how ludicrous your argument is actually gave me the energy to go on. I’m pissed off at you now. I’ll be fair to you in the future. And I want to thank you for this gift that you have given to me. By calling out all critics, you made me want to be a better one.

You’re right. I flipped out over Movie 43, but not because it sucks or because you’re proud of it, but because you can’t take the heat and you should get out of the kitchen.

I feel so energized by your lazy movie and thoughtless hit-and-run styled comments where you can’t even really be bothered to defend your movie to anyone. You’re like that 50 year old guy driving down the street in the rain in an overcompensating sports car through a red light on your way to work, splashing the poor people you’re think you’re catering to. What you never think about is that one of those people getting splashed could create something better than your unimaginative junk.

So thanks, Peter. I’m not going anywhere. I will continue to treat everyone I meet in this industry with the utmost respect until proven otherwise, but unless you can respond to any of this like a man and admit that you made an unoriginal movie or even bother to explain why you think it is, you’ll just be seen as a coward to me on this one. I don’t know you from anyone else, and on a personal level you might be a decent guy who just let his mouth get away from him. It happens. I might be doing it right now. But there’s not a single thing that I’ve written here that I regret.

-Andrew Parker

Film Critic

Why I Don't Just Kill Myself?

Every day since about the ending of October I have thought about killing myself as one of the last things before I get ready to go to bed, and often as the first thought I have upon waking. I probably wouldn't go through it for a handful of reasons.

First off, my prefered method of suicide is so specific that it could never happen. It would involve me having to go back to the town I grew up in and going to the bridge near my childhood home. I'd throw myself off one of the numerous bridges in the Toronto area, but there are nets and failsafes around those worth throwning oneself from around here. Even if I did go back to Massachusetts, I would still need two cinder blocks, two metal chains and a pair of padlocks. I would step into the first cinder block through the holes, sit down, and chain and lock the block to my ankles and throw the key over the bridge. Then I would put my arms through the holes of the cinder block and chain and lock my wrists up. Maybe handcuffs would work better for this. I don't know. Then when I was all done, I would raise the block over my head and then fall ass over teakettle into the extremely deep lake below where nothing ever gets found according to local legend. That's what I think of every morning when I wake up. Never anything positive, just killing myself and ending it all. I've tried to adapt this plan into something usable here, but it never seems to come together like I want it to.

Second, I feel guilt worse than any other emotion. Massive amounts of it. I can't stand knowing that some people would miss me so much or that there would be so many unanswered questions. Sure, on the surface things seem great for me. New job, book deal, constant work that's always getting complimented in just the right ways. But I never have any breaks. No downtime. I have friends who hound me to take time off and I have "friends" who get pissed that I can't help them with every little thing they want me to help them with. And if you were to ask me if I was taking on too much or if I regret the heavy workload, I would tell you I could handle it. And I could. If my personal situation was better. If I'm spending 12 hours a day working like I usually do, the other 12 are usually taken up by the few hours of sleep I get or worrying about anything and everything falling through at any second. That doesn't exactly seem like a livable life. In fact, work is just about the only thing that keeps me going. It pays pure shit even in the volume I do it in, but it's a passion and one of the few things I'm actually good at.

That guilt also makes me feel like a burden on everyone around me and not exactly a pleasant person to be around. I rely on others way too much. I know this. I work very hard not to be in that position, but it never works out. I work and work and work and I still have to take from others who - as we all know from loaning anything to anyone or doing favours for friends - will eventually resent me and just not understand why things are the way they are because they have no frame of reference. I have no idea what it's like to be them, so why should they ever know what it's like to be me?

Even when it comes to work, I feel guilt because I know I'm good at what I do and that whenever I have it available, I will put my heart and soul into everything I do. Since October, though, I can admit that some of the things I have written aren't even up to my own high standards and they were done simply as favours or to simply clear a to-do list. I never shut off working, as evidenced by the fact that I have checked my email six times since I started writing this. I want to get back to the point where it could be the only thing to focus on, but that's just not happening. A lot of people who come up to me seem to think I have a pretty comfortable spot at my job, but anyone in this industry knows that for better or worse, if you snooze you lose. I so desperately want to take a hiatus, but I've seen first hand the people waiting on the sidelines for someone to take even the slightest amount of time off to swoop in and take some work from someone. I'm not calling out anyone specific on this one, but you all know what I'm talking about whether you did it yourself or you're the one who took the time off. The film game on all sides of the equation from writers to actors to PR and beyond is a perpetually moving runaway train if you don't have the luxury of being at a certain level where you can actually walk away from something. Even then, you can't stay low very long. You're only as good as your last success, and in this day and age those successes have very short shelf lives. People have been telling me almost to my face that they are lining up to take my job if I move on to something better/slip. I vastly prefer those people to the ones who won't admit it.

It sounds like a little thing, but given how much I have accomplished while struggling I'd be crazy not to keep going and I'd be just as crazy to keep going at the same pace. I can't remember a week where I didn't work every single day in the past year. Even on days when I was too sick to move, I was putting in hours and hours of work.

Some people got why I did it and some people never will, and I would feel guilty leaving without explaining why I do these things.

I guess the final reason is the silliest. I can't finish writing a suicide note that I could be proud of. I have dozens of drafts that I started and abandoned at various points. How do I sum up how much the people in my life mean to me even when I've done wrong or they've done everything right? How do I calm them down when some might think they had a hand in my decision to end my own life? I could just go ahead, do it quietly, and leave a mystery to be unravelled, but I'm afraid that would be misinterpreted.

So I guess, because I just suck at everything, I have to just go on living. Probably not the best choice, but from what I'm told - and have been told for months now - that things do often get better.

Now, as many of you know by now, I'm bipolar, and there's probably more than a few of you who think that this might be a medication issue or some other medical related problem. I have talked to a doctor (not a therapist, which I have to still wait a few weeks to talk to) who assures me there's nothing wrong with the meds. In fact, the meds have kept me from doing anything incredibly stupid up to this point. Without them, the outcome of this surely would have been a lot different.

My problems at the moment are all of the social variety and I would share the story with you all, but it just takes too damned long to explain, it wouldn't make any difference, and I feel oddly worse after talking about it. So if you're reading this and you see me all the time, just know I am going through massive amounts of shit. If you are reading this and you are involved in the same shit, know that I'm working on it as best I can while dealing with other shit. If you think I'm ignoring you, I'm not. If you think I'm only focusing on the good or the bad at any given time, I'm not. I'm just trying to survive. That's really the name of the game at this point. And don't think of this as some privileged person complaining about their job. I'm not privileged, but I do love my job.

Just for now know that I'm not doing so great, but I'm working on it. I just needed to say this before anyone misconstrues anything or thinks that I'm turning into some kind of asshole.

Halfway Point of 2012 Top and Bottom 10

So I guess that making up our own halfway point of the year top tens and bottom tens has become a thing now. I have no idea why it’s a thing since there are a five full months and some change left in 2012 and none of this will ever stay the same with awards and festival season coming up, so I guess this is a pointless exercise.

Yet, just the same a distressing number of people who read my stuff have been asking me for my top tens and bottom tens from the first six months of the year. The order of these on the actual list will probably even change over the course of the year with some lower films on this list bumped up with consideration and rewatches over time.

NOTE: These lists do not include festival fare, short films, direct to DVD releases, or films that were originally released in 2011, or anything that was up for awards in 2011. These are just theatrically released films for 2012.

Best for First Half of 2012 (Or, as I like to call it, Honestly Not a Lot of Excellent Stuff Has Come Out)

10. Magic Mike

9. 21 Jump Street

8. Wanderlust

7. Cosmopolis

6. Goon

5. Chronicle

4. The Raid: Redemption

3. Bernie

2. Alps

1. Moonrise Kingdom

Worst of 2012 (Or, as I like to call it, I Could Really Only Get an Actual Hate On for the First Nine)

10. Men in Black III

9. One for the Money

8. Act of Valor

7. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

6. Underworld Awakening

5. That’s My Boy

4. People Like Us

3. This Means War

2. The Devil Inside

1. Savages

Halcyon Daze

"And the ragged rock in the restless waters,/Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;/On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,/In navigable weather it is always a seamark/To lay a course by: but in the sombre season/Or the sudden fury, is what it always was." - T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

January 2009

I was dressed up, but I can’t remember exactly why. It was a meeting of some sort. Somewhere at U of T. The slush and ice crunched beneath my feet. The morning snow had warmed up in the afternoon sunlight, but the crisp wind didn’t cede, still allowing flurries to flutter through the air as my socks grew increasingly soaked through the only pair of dress shoes I owned with the holes in the heel. I wore extra thick socks to compensate, but I just felt like a sweaty, icky mess all over.

The meeting isn’t the important part of the story. Being at the corner of College and Spadina was.

I never expect to see anyone from my time Massachusetts up here, friendly or otherwise, but the universe works in strange ways. A voice called to me from behind, but it wasn’t one I could immediately place. Even when I turned around to see where the call was coming from I could place the face, but I had forgotten the name. Was it Matt? Was that his name?

“Hey! It’s Jay!” Shit. Yes, Jason. I don’t know why I really forgot his name since he did have some oddly tangential relevance to a story I started telling here a while ago. Probably because he was who she dated in the interim between our implosion and the man she ultimately found happiness in. The two of us had hung out and they didn’t date until after I was well out of the picture. I know he was present for the last time I spoke to her face to face and I told her what a terrible person I thought she was. I was drunk. People do foolish things when they’re drunk. But he never judged me for it or even mentioned it.

We caught up in the briefest way I could keep it. It’s not that Jay was a particularly bad guy, but he was a spectre from a past that I only selfishly like to revisit on my own terms. Plus, I was cold and miserable from whatever had happened earlier that led to that street corner in the first place. Much like the meeting would become a distant memory, I thought what transpired on that corner would’ve faded as well, but it became something that I always came back to. I don’t even fully remember why Jay was even in town since he lived in Hartford now, but as former friends tend to do, they get your mind racing.

“So have you talked to Kerri at all?” He asked somewhat half heartedly in an attempt to be relevant and remind me that we once had common acquaintances. I knew he still saw her quite a bit. In the digital age you know exactly who hangs out with who and where quite easily whether you want the answers or not.

“I can’t say that I have and that I have no desire to in any way.” I lied. Partially. I was always curious, but what would I say to her that wasn’t already made clear?

“Yeah, I figured.” He nodded slightly and smirked. “You know she’s not doing so good, right?”

“Yeah, I heard she has some sort of degenerative muscle disease or something like that?”

Jason proceeded to tell me a bunch of what I already knew and more than I cared to know. That she can barely walk and that she rarely leaves the house. When she does it takes over an hour to prepare everything, sometimes needing a wheelchair and a helper dog on the worst days. She’s in and out of surgery and physical therapy on a regular basis. Dan still takes great care of her and they’re still together after eight trying years.

I pretended to care, but I went back even further in my mind and grew angrier. I went back to the time where Dan didn’t even know me and he hated me. The biggest gap in my personal relationship with Kerri is wondering what she said to him to make a complete stranger hate me enough to do what he did. It had to be the fall out from that party, but as faded as that memory has become I know things never got above a shouting match before she was asked to leave. Was it because my friend Julie asked her to leave? Did she feel I had effectively divided our formerly close knit group of friends?

“You know, she still brings you up. We all do. One day you just kind of vanished and now here you are. Do you ever come back?”

I hadn’t been back in ages. I really had nothing to go back to aside from some casual friends who probably wouldn’t be down to hang out at a moments notice.

“You should try calling her or writing her.”

“I might just do that.” I had no intention of doing that. As vaguely pleasant as I remembered Jay being, this wasn’t something I was going to think about much in the future.

That’s also a lie.

May 19^th, 2012

I’m getting way too old for this. What the fuck is wrong with me?

The sun is coming up. My sternum is incredibly bruised and my right fist is throbbing. I’m rounding College and Spadina after doubling back on myself. I stumble past the roundabout in the middle of the street on Spadina vaguely veering into non existent traffic. Alone, on foot, and incredibly drunk, I duck behind a U of T building to promptly vomit behind a dumpster and to hurl a Rubbermaid trashcan in disgust.

I was angry. Really angry. But at who and why? I didn’t even remember anymore. It was a building up of a lot of emotion over time that just had to come out somehow. Part of me had just had enough of being me.

It was the drunkest I had ever walked home without hailing a cab, but part of me wanted every second of inconvenience and pain. Somewhere deep down I thought I deserved it and that I had to learn the final lesson of all of this. The final realization that life is just one giant pile of shit.

That sun was really bright even at 5:30am. Almost blinding. I might have bobbed and weaved to avoid its rays even if I didn’t have 12 beers and three shots in me. There were also breaks to sit and cry. And a stop at McDonalds to try and soak up the booze in my stomach with five hastily purchased hash browns. Pretty sure I was crying at the counter there, too.

December 22^nd, 2011

“Hey, it’s me

How have you been? It’s been a while, but from what I hear you seem to be doing great. You’re a film critic now? Somehow that makes perfect sense to me. lol

You’re writing again, which is cool. I’ve noticed your blog. You’re still really great with words. The last I heard about you before this was when I talked to Jay and he said he saw you in Toronto a few years ago. Are you still there? What’s it like? I hear it’s like Boston, but less expensive. lol

Anyways, I don’t know how much you know about what I’m going through, and I don’t want to stop you, but I want you to know that I’m sorry. I really am. You didn’t deserve any of that. You have every right to say everything you want to about me. What I did to you was terrible. I was young and you didn’t deserve to have someone like me around all the time.

I didn’t know what to do. I blamed you for things for so long, but I didn’t know what I was trying to get from you. I have so many regrets from that time, and a lot of them never went away or I just made things worse. I was really young and really stupid.

Write me back if you want. I would understand if you didn’t, but I would love to talk. I don’t really talk to many people from back then anymore. It doesn’t help when you can’t really leave the house, and talking to your dogs and cats starts to get creepy after a while. :-/

I would love to hear how your doing. But even if I don’t talk to you again, just know you are in my thoughts a lot and that I hope for the best for you.

Love,

K”

August 2003

I normally wouldn’t have gone to check out Dan’s crappy band under any other circumstances, but I had to see how he would react if he played the song he wrote about me while I was there in front of him. After all, he had never met me before and he wrote a song about how much of an asshole I was to his current girlfriend. It was a pretty dark secret that Jay and Matt had leaked to me quite a long time ago that he had written it before sending it over to me and making me promise to not say anything. Apparently they had gotten a few laughs out of it, too.

The band was playing Tammany Hall in Worcester. I wasn’t in the city, but I was willing to make the trip because this girl I had been hitting on quite heavily happened to be a bartender there. I could kill two birds with one stone on this trip. Heck, maybe if she knew the song was about me she would actually sleep with me. That has to count for something, right?

Tammany had their tables set up that night since Dan’s band wasn’t one that was likely to start mosh pits. Sure, they sounded like Days of the New, but who the hell wanted to mosh to that? Besides, Tammany was a hippy/house bar back then and their three pronged sonic assault of acoustic guitars and a shitload of snare drum went over well with the often permastoned clientele. It wasn’t a dance night. It was a drink your face off and space out at a point on the wall night.

I sat as close to the stage as I could, but since it was as dead as humanly possible I moved back to the second row of haphazardly arranged round tables so I didn’t appear too eager. As the band began to set up, Dan looked directly at me. Keep in mind we had never met in person, but he had to know right away. The true mercy I showed in all of this was not inviting all of my friends who wanted to laugh in his face to tag along. I just sat there drinking a gin and tonic and returning the gaze that was there from the start.

I never took my eyes off of him except for when I got drinks. There were maybe 65 people there, but no one was going to take my table. I would just go right back over there and waited for the song to start.

“This is a song about not being able to let go. It’s about someone who’s here right now. Name of the song is ‘Old Man.’ It’s on our record for sale in the back.”

One

Two

Three

Four

May 18^th, 2012

“Can I just hang out with you here for a while? My boyfriend’s in the theatre and I don’t really want to go back in there. I don’t care what I’m doing, but, like, I want to do something with REAL PEOPLE. And I haven’t done that in so long.”

She was gorgeous. Thick rimmed glasses, loose fitting T-shirt, curly black hair, and a frilly dress. She was also clearly intoxicated. We had been flirting and playing with a balloon outside the theatre for twenty minutes before she even mentioned she had a boyfriend. Or that she had been drinking. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t picked up on it before, but then again, I didn’t know who she was. She just seemed pretty cool to me.

I introduced myself. She said her name was Sara and I asked if it was Sara or Sarah with an h. She thought it was cute. We kept talking for a while and with every line of conversation she moved closer and closer to me, eventually with her placing her hand on my leg and me getting closer and closer to making a terrible decision on so many levels.

Before it could get to that point, her even more intoxicated boyfriend emerged from the theatre. He had to be younger than her or she was just really mature for her age. He was frumpy and wearing an Atreyu hoodie with a very clear drink stain on it. They didn’t look like the kind of couple one would ever see together.

“Sweetie, I got up and I can’t find my drink now.”

“Go back in and try to find it! I just can’t sit there and watch this movie right now.”

He went back inside and the second he was gone she kissed me quickly and asked me to leave with her right then. The mind reeled in so many different directions and I was never good at snap decisions. I had just been complaining to a friend – an ex-girlfriend, no less – that it seemed like everyone around me was getting laid, but me. My stress level had been through the roof. What would I do?

He came back to me with all their stuff like they were leaving. It was probably for the best for the both of them, or at least that’s what I was telling myself. I didn’t know their entire story. I only knew her for about 30 minutes from playing with a balloon in the lobby of a movie theatre and talking about our favourite childhood memories.

He went to the washroom and she gave me her number. Then she went and he waited behind and gave me the glare that screams back off, but with a hint of a deeper sadness that I somehow knew all to well.

I haven’t called her. I just don’t know.

May 19^th, 2012

On the floor. Empty apartment. Just threw some empty coffee cups around in a fit of rage. Why can’t I finish anything I start? Can there be just one thing in this life I can hang onto without it leaving me or without me screwing it up? What did that asshole at the party earlier tonight mean when he told me that death just seems to follow me around? He pretty much told me I was cursed and if the last 48 hours were any indication he wasn’t that far off. What the fuck did I have to do? What could I have done? Was there anything that could be done? Why the fuck is everything bothering me so much these days? I should be fucking ecstatic. I’m such a shithead.

July 4^th, 2002

It was a drinking game of some sort and it was the last time face to face. She said something about maturity in regard to a comment I made. I told her a real sign of maturity is cheating on your boyfriend the day he found out his mother died and then promptly breaking up with him. She was silent for a moment. It felt like an eternity.

“Well, maybe if things didn’t keep happening in your life like they were, we would still be together.”

She never clarified the statement. We were all drunk. I threw my pint glass full of rum and coke at the wall and told her to go fuck herself. Astoundingly I didn’t get thrown out of my friend Julie’s house for that. Instead, she did. It was the last thing she said to me.

Sometime earlier this year. Maybe February. While talking to a writer friend who will remain nameless, but is probably reading this right now.

“Whatever happened to your personal blog, anyway?”

“It’s still there. I just wrote myself into a corner. All my film writing started getting gobbled up by other outlets that were willing to pay me for things, and I started a personal story I wanted to get back to, but I couldn’t figure out just where in time I wanted it to progress to. I wanted to hurry to the end, but I didn’t want to shortchange the story. If that makes any sense…”

“It does. But maybe it was for the best that you stopped doing those personal entries. It’s not like you’re writing a memoir or anything. I mean, all of those Letters to Ex-Girlfriends is just more of that dating diary bullshit that’s out there that everyone thinks they can do, but every few can write adequately enough about it. I mean, it’s probably the most egotistical thing someone can do. ‘Oh, look at me! I’m on some next level shit because I can be all open and talk about things in my life that I probably screwed up in the first place.’ You’re honestly better than that.”

“But what if that’s what I actually want to ultimately write about the most?”

“Oh, I didn’t say DON’T do it.”

May 17^th, 2012

I found out Kerri had killed herself in the middle of discussing my pitiful sex life with a friend online. Well, actually, I was just getting jealous because she was talking about how great her’s was going and I wanted to put a fist through my own face.

Jay emailed me out of the blue. I thought it was spam from someone’s long forgotten account, but apparently he still works for the university he went to so everything was still in working order.

She had passed on two nights prior following an overdose of pills of some sort. Details were sketchy. He wanted to know if I wanted to be kept in the loop for the funeral. Apparently she still talked about me and a lot of our old friends wanted to see me again.

I didn’t respond, but I did pull up the email from last year that I never responded to, and I just proceeded to cry.

August 30^th, 2001

“I have to go.”

I was still in her bed, pretty much begging and crying for her not to leave. I had just lost my father. My mother was about to die any day then. It was a lot to ask for her just to stay for ten more minutes. In hindsight, it was pathetic to a degree and probably one of the reasons she cheated on me to begin with, but even though she was only going to be at university I just couldn’t lose her right then.

I held on so tightly as she slowly got up to make her way to her already packed suitcases. On top was a care package I had come by to give to her so she would have something to remember us by. Pictures in frames, posters to hang, tiny stuffed animals, and keepsakes from everything we had done that year.

“I don’t know what to do right now.” It was the only thing I could blurt out because I knew it was the only thing that came to mind.

She came back towards me and kissed me softly and sweetly. “I love you. Just remember that.”

I cried for about fifteen minutes as her grandparents told her that they needed to leave an hour ago and that I had to go home because they had dinner reservations on their way to New Hampshire. It was a family thing. I wasn’t invited.

I took a deep breath and wrapped my arms around her one last time.

May 19^th, 2012

Hitting on every girl in sight was probably a terrible idea. They can smell desperation and I had to reek of it. My sternum and fist were killing from a playful fight in the front yard in one of the most primal displays of ritualized mating I probably ever engaged in. I even technically won the fight in the proper sense. I don’t even know why we did it. Either way, at the end of the night all I could see out on the street and at the party were people making out with one another and it was all too much. This was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have left that barbecue earlier in the evening that made me even drunker than I probably would have been. As people tend to do when they essentially bottom out emotionally, they try to find anything they can to numb the pain, but they only make it far worse.

I could hear the voices of people fading in the background asking me to come back to the party, or to grab a glass of water at the very least. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to be around anyone anymore. I was going to pay for it tonight, tomorrow, and forever for the past. And in that moment I realized I’m the type of person who just can’t ever let anything go. That was roughly at the same moment I vomited behind that U of T dumpster and threw the trash can in a rage.

I never felt smaller than screaming to myself in that moment with no one around to hear it.

Best and Worst of 2011

For a FULL LIST of winners, losers, and explanations, head on over to Criticize This! sometime around Christmas.

25 Best Films of 2011

25. Terri
24. Source Code
23. Senna
22. Monsieur Lazhar
21. The Guard
20. The Trip
19. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
18. Good Neighbours
17. Beauty Day
16. Captain America
15. Margaret
14. Mysteries of Lisbon
13. A Separation
12. The Descendants
11. The Adventures of Tintin
10. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
9. Melancholia
8. Win Win
7. Cafe de Flore
6. Attack the Block
5. Take Shelter
4. The Artist
3. Meek's Cutoff
2. Tree of Life
1. Like Crazy



10 Worst Films of 2011

10. Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
9. New Year's Eve
8. Creature
7. The Lincoln Lawyer
6. Red Riding Hood
5. Priest
4. The Hangover Part II
3. Wound
2. The Art of Getting By
1. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star